Tulsa World, Okla., John Klein column

Gil Cloud's friends believed he was committing career suicide when he became the Union Public Schools athletic director in 1976.

Union was a small school district on the edge of Tulsa. Big city schools such as Booker T. Washington, Memorial, Edison, Hale and East Central dominated high school athletics.

Union High School barely had 500 students, was the smallest school in Class 3A, and had little success in Class 2A to build upon.

"So, we built an 11,000-seat football stadium," said Cloud. "It didn't sound like such a good idea at the time.

"I think looking back, we now know that was a good thing."

Cloud, who helped lead the athletic migration to the suburbs, is now in charge of trying to reverse that trend.

Cloud, the new athletic director for Tulsa Public Schools, wants to bring athletes, high-level coaches and success back to the urban schools.

He was a part of the explosion of suburban schools that has seen Union, Jenks, Broken Arrow and Owasso become state powers in Oklahoma's largest class.

"What we saw at the time, and why I was so optimistic about what we could do at Union, was that there was such a building boom out there," Cloud said. "The population was moving out there. The shopping and restaurants were opening out there.

"When people moved to Tulsa, they were looking for houses in the suburbs. We felt like all of the growth was going to be out there. So, we forged ahead with a lot of projects to make our school district as attractive as it could be to possible residents."

Many believe the migration was families moving from Tulsa to the suburbs for bigger and better housing, schools and quality of life.

"In reality, 80 percent of our new students at that time, in the late 1970s, were coming from outside of Tulsa," said Cloud. "Our job was to make our school district the most attractive it could be.

"As a result, when people moved to Tulsa they looked at the Union school district because of what we had, our reputation and what we were planning."

Now, Cloud believes a reversal of migration back to the city seems to be happening.

"That's why I believe we have a chance," he said. "People are moving back into midtown. They are moving downtown. People want to be back in the city.

"We have an opportunity. And, in athletics, we can be a very visible part of this school system."

Tulsa Public Schools is getting an athletic director who understands public relations, marketing and building an athletic program with facilities and top-notch coaches.

That was his formula at Union and later at Guthrie High School, Northeastern State and Upper Iowa.

"I remember other athletic directors used to joke that the local paper was the Union World," Cloud said. "We understood that there was a daily sports section being published here in Tulsa. And, we had good stories to tell in that daily sports section.

"We just felt like it was our job to make sure the local sports writers and broadcasters were aware of our good stories. We understood the visibility that could bring our story to more people and how that could impact our school system."

That approach became the norm at suburban schools around Tulsa and has turned those schools into the most powerful athletic collection of high schools in the state.

That has helped make the job of Tulsa Public Schools athletic director even more difficult.

So, TPS has hired the architect of the suburban model in hopes of restoring Tulsa Public Schools as a significant state athletic power.

"When I got out of the University of Tulsa in 1969, the pinnacle for any coach was to get a job at Tulsa Public Schools," Cloud said. "One of my jobs will be to try to find the funding to make sure our coaching jobs are competitive with other school districts around the state. You can do that by fixing some things internally and by building relationships with the corporate and public sector.

"We also need to have facilities, and that is something that was already being addressed before I got here."

By 2014, all of the TPS high schools will have artificial turf practice fields. A building program for new athletic facilities continues, including a new gym recently opened at Booker T. Washington and another under construction at Edison.

"Level playing field," Cloud said. "We have to give our athletes and our coaches an equal opportunity to compete."

Still, all of these plans will not be easy or cheap.

In addition, he was named to the job in the wake of a scandal that rocked Tulsa Public Schools athletics.

It has been a shaky few years for TPS.

"I was on the search committee to find a new athletic director, and the longer I thought about the more I realized that I'd like to have that challenge," Cloud said. "I'm a product of Tulsa Public Schools (Rogers). I have been an athletic director for about 30 years at a lot of different levels.

"I understand the challenges. I understand how difficult it could be. That's OK. This is a very important job because athletics is such a visible part of this or any school system. And it is important to me. I wanted to do this."